johnny July 28th, 2010
The things you’ll do when you’re sitting around the house…
The other day I built a parabolic reflector out of cardboard and some foil tape I had lying about. I was researching various homemade antenna designs I want to tinker with and stumbled on one that I actually had all the parts for on hand. As we are so close to the edge of EVDO reception here that moving down the hill a few feet would kill the signal, it seemed like it would be worth a shot. After all, it cost maybe fifty cents for the foil tape I used and the cardboard was free.
Now, this is hardly a good mobile solution as it’s fairly directional, but after spending twenty minutes or so on the roof pointing the reflector and testing bandwidth, I got pretty good results. The SNR increase doesn’t even register on the cradlepoint’s web interface, which is fairly lackluster, so I had to result to ping flooding our upstream router to detect a better signal. No, I didn’t DoS it, I kept the packet count to 100 at a time while aligning and 1000 packets for bandwidth testing.
I didn’t record all the numbers, but to give you an idea of the improvement: without the reflector, we were seeing 10-30% packet loss and average roundtrip times that ranged from 5 seconds to 9.5 seconds. Even at that, the connection was usable. Once the reflector was aligned, packet loss dropped to 0-1% and average roundtrip times stayed about 2.5 seconds. This equates to a 100-300% increase in bandwidth plus the bandwidth recovered from dropped packets.
The connection is hardly blazing fast, but it’s quite a bit more usable than previously. For our normal usage patterns, it’s actually quite acceptable. Bear in mind that our average roundtrip times are similar to 380ms. The previously stated times are for icmp packets being sent out as fast as possible and saturating the connection.
With that sort of improvement, I’m much more determined to build a waveguide antenna for times when we’re having trouble hitting a tower. Bonus points if I can fit both the wifi and 3g spectrums into the same antenna and use it for a wifi repeater as well.
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jenn December 20th, 2009
Its not outwardly obvious, but I spent my only day off upgrading this weblog. It was a big jump in versions, and I had to upgrade a lot of plugins as well. So far, so good but there could be lots of issues that haven’t cropped up yet. Please let me know if you experience any problems or annoyances.
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jenn January 4th, 2009
Well, we have been sitting in the same place so long I think I have a root or two starting. We need start moving before that root makes contact with the soil. The two main reasons we have been here so long are my new web page and the fabulous hospitality of my Aunt and Uncle. And, well a little lack of motivation on my part compounded with being sick.
Being with family has been great. It was nice to be able to spend the holidays with loved ones. What is Christmas w/o excited little children ripping open presents? My relatives provided that and much more. Roasted lamb, spiced eggnog, rum cake, holiday cheer, and much more. We have had some nice times while we have been here and really appreciate their concern and hospitality. We will miss them for sure. But, now its time to ramble.
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jenn December 25th, 2008
I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas.
Here is my present to all!
FreeCampsites.net
A database of free and inexpensive RV compatible campsites and boondocking locations. It is completely user driven. RVers like you and I input the location and the data. I know its a bit sparse at the moment… so you should get busy 
.
I know, there are a few of these out there already. But, many of the ones that I saw are missing some basic features that I have included, and their interfaces are a bit difficult to work with. I am sure there are some things that I need to work on too. I am open to suggestions.
Many thanks to The Dead One and Cyberhobo for their plugins and patience.
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jenn December 13th, 2008
-> Scroll down or click here for my Geo Mashup – TDO Miniforms solution <-
So much for being on an extended vacation. For the last couple of days I have been completely engrossed in building a new website. I have fallen back into my old habits of staying up all night and coding, getting some sleep, grabbing some coffee, and coding some more. Ah, just like the good old days. The ones before the corporate machine killed any enjoyment that that behavior gave me.
Back in those days, Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal didn’t exsist. You (I) did everything by hand. You wanted a web based file manager, a web based mysql manager, or a bulletin board? You wrote it. Now, we have all of these wonderful content management systems with tons of great plugins. But, they come with their own head aches too. You want a certain kind of functionality? Time to start hacking.
Thank god for open source.
Tonight I ran into that situation. From what I have read, a lot of other people have too. So, I decided to post my solution in hopes that it helps some one else.
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